


irony was the shackles

by Elendraug



Category: South Park
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Existential Crisis, Fatalism, Gen, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Waffles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21973393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy.
Relationships: Karen McCormick & Kenny McCormick, Karen McCormick & Kenny McCormick & New Kid | Douchebag, Karen McCormick & New Kid | Douchebag, Kenny McCormick & New Kid | Douchebag
Kudos: 61
Collections: Genuary 2021





	irony was the shackles

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to Span, if you’re still somewhere out there
> 
> [the commercial for The Buzz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ondQL-w5IG4) played incessantly on Comedy Central and permanently impacted my music taste
> 
> RIP Dolores O'Riordan
> 
> ♫ the cranberries - [zombie (acoustic)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_m_273xYBY)  
> ♫ R.E.M. - [what's the frequency, kenneth?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIt1NpYi4VM)
> 
> warning for discussions of canon pet death and human death

The Amazing Butthole and Mysterion sit together on the worn edge of a trampoline that’s seen better days; its surface is damp from half-melted snow. Although it’s been responsible for a nonzero number of Kenny’s deaths, it still provides better seating in the fresh air than staying near the mildewed carpet his dad stapled to the bare subfloor when Gerald stopped calling it a clubhouse and Stuart started calling it home.

Outside there are other off-putting odors to contend with, but at least it’s easier to breathe and maintain an appetite. Kenny holds out a paper plate stacked with four waffles until the new kid takes one.

“It may not seem like much,” he begins, balancing the plate on his knees and removing a glove before he picks up a waffle for himself, “but believe me, name-brand stuff is practically unheard of around here.”

The abandoned structures of SoDoSoPa loom above them, these towering pieces of shit now obscuring whatever horizon he’d had, at their prime serving up nothing but ten dollar ice cream and headaches. Any outdoor dining sets had been sold, stolen, or confiscated within months; he figures the risk of an unfortunate tumble off the trampoline-turned-table is well worth the relatively reduced noise now that foot traffic’s been radically reduced and no one’s cooked meth in his garage for a while.

“You know, Karen trusts you.”

Douchebag bites into the waffle and chews it, chocolate chip and warm enough but rapidly cooling in the winter weather. For once, it’s food that’s not for farting and not for appeasing his parents—it just is. He kicks his feet idly and watches Kenny as he talks.

“I know you don’t have any siblings, so maybe it’s not the same.” Kenny speaks while chewing a section that didn’t toast right and stayed soggy when the ice dissipated. He shrugs. “It’s just cool of you to look out for her like I try to.”

When the new kid takes the next bite, the traces of moisture from his saliva or the freezerburnt Eggo packaging have begun to reform into ice, solidified from exposure to the quiet mountain air. There’s a slight chill to it, but he chews through it despite the cold, before it can get worse.

“She asked you to watch out for me back in Zaron, didn’t she? You remind me of her, too, in some ways.” He finishes off the waffle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then reaches up to ensure his bangs are tucked up into the hood of his outfit instead of snagged in his mask. “Maybe we can watch out for each other.”

Douchebag eats the rest of his waffle and refocuses his attention on untangling the PS/2 cables that knot two IBM model M keyboards together across his back as a pair of faded-beige plastic wings. He shrugs out of the assemblage, and they fall to the mesh fabric of the trampoline with a familiar, archaic clacking.

“I’m used to being the one no one in this town understands,” Kenny continues. He lifts the plate again to offer the second half of the snack; the new kid accepts. “If I had any money worth betting, I’d bet Mackey asked you a bunch of questions he didn’t really want the answer to.”

Douchebag resumes kicking his feet, and starts in on the second waffle, with an expression that could be considered contemplative. He looks out over a stack of tires and the husk of a sedan, past the circle of paving stones that marked some kind of patio in the past life of this backyard.

Kenny raises the final and fourth waffle to his teeth and bites into a charred section that leaned directly against the heating element, unprotected by the grates that were supposed to prevent this damage but failed over time and by way of bad design.

“These used to taste shittier,” he says, holding it up and away from his face, to partially eclipse the sun. “I remember them tasting shittier, anyway. In the nineties.”

The overcast sunlight isn’t strong enough to throw a shadow onto Mysterion’s face. The effect is diluted, an imitation of an expected brightness, leaving the impression of what might be warmth in another few months but not achieving fidelity to the experience. It’s off-brand, with a preservative-laden, plastic aftertaste. It’s a poor substitute for the real summer sun, as bitter as a sludge of cocoa powder mixed with hot water and poured over breakfast served for dinner.

"I've seen four U.S. presidencies, but I'm still in fourth grade.” He lowers his arm and sets the waffle back on the thin surface of the paper plate before glancing to the new kid. “How is that possible?"

The new kid stares back at him, inscrutable, awaiting any elaboration. There’s a squeeze bottle of ketchup duct-taped to his left wrist, and mustard attached to his right: condiments construed as counterweights.

“It’s insane, and I know that.” He considers tossing the uneaten remains to the ground to let assorted animals carry it away like so much carrion, and weighs the social pricetag assigned to the inherent value of rats, or gerbils, or guinea pigs. Laura Tucker’s missteps have led to Stripe #4 as surely as his own crush deaths have led to a succession of selves, iterative, with daily multiple _memento mori_ to recall his own corpses from memory when Worcestershire sauce or toxic goo aren’t invoked to achieve it physically. “But you remember the times that I’ve died, and that has to mean something.”

Crabgrass sparsely dots a section of mud, no doubt unremarkable in this imaginary tragic kingdom, the latest in a series of temporarily final resting places unknown to anyone besides the two of them. There’s no trace of what had spilled out of him, sliced open by fallen signage like a dissected manatee, stricken from the story until he was next needed, rarely with so much as an afterthought. It’s all too easy to picture him, uncanny with his spine unnaturally extended, with his body crumpled like the pilfered pornography they climbed over to exit his bedroom through a gutted washing machine.

Fartlord eats his waffle, nonplussed in both senses by the macabre manifesting, whether in a Mexican restaurant or at the personal decoupling of his mother’s shoulder ball and socket joint. Glitching the sequence of events to suspend the metal letter several stories above them, reset to its fragile instability and restoring Kenny’s skeletal structure, is no different than attending to Scott’s insulin shock simultaneously after and before he succumbed to it. Through a particular lens, it’s established enchiritos as honorarily goth.

“I was dead when they first started playing this. With that videotape.” Kenny keeps eating what passes for a meal, and licks his fingertip to clear crumbs from the plate. He’s been too hungry historically to leave it unfinished, and it’s transferred into his determination to see narratives brought to conclusions, no matter how illogical.

The sugar sediment of Nestlé Quik has stood in for syrup at times, or masked the flavor of milk obtained past its prime, and in kind he’s witnessed himself toppled and consumed, ashes abject in the autocannibalism of his own relevance, struggling to supercede and exorcise the unpalatable poison he was drawn into before it made them all sick.

Douchebag picks at a decaying leaf that’s adhered to the sole of his shoe and lets it fall to the discolored concrete. 

“I remember you dying, more than once,” Kenny adds, gruff with performative gravitas. “I even remember killing you, when you wouldn’t break the Gentleman’s Oath.”

The new kid rubs his gloved fingers together to drop bits of dirt to the ground.

Mysterion hesitates, searching for the words in the tattered scraps of dollar store cheesecloth that comprised his previous costume, in the stubborn persistence of a memory that defies reality.

“I could tell it was you, though. Somehow you moved us all forward, like it didn’t even slow you down.” He lifts his eyes to engage but not scrutinize. “You just kept going.”

There’s associated static when he dwells on it, unsuccessful tracking adjustments on a VCR, and it summons sense memory of being electrocuted in the snow like Chaos’ minions, to complete or short out a circuit, tossed aside and forgotten after they’ve finished a task. He’s occasionally elevated to something like royalty in a short-lived funeral procession before they rend him apart, although maybe it’s less impressive than a gerbil king by someone else’s metrics. Rodents in South Park rarely escape disposability, for surgery or entertainment or experimentation. He’s entangled with every past and future death, a rat king fashioned into a wheel of fortune, spinning ceaselessly through every unlucky outcome, evoking unwelcome echoes of Nyarlathotep, tunneling himself through the walls of his own house.

“I thought the cult's involvement could explain it, but this is the first time I've been personally involved in time travel since...” He trails off, racking his brain for another lived and relived rerun of a day. “Well, ever, I think, except for that photo I couldn't remember taking.”

Kenny sets the plate down on the trampoline behind him, next to the detached keyboards, and turns to face his friend, earnest, anticipatory. “Do you think there’s an explanation for all this? Is every eventuality just another potential fate?”

The new kid blinks, looking back at him levelly, concentrating. There’s a beat.

He farts.

Kenny snickers, at first under his breath until it evolves into full-fledged laughter; he leans back and lets his cape shield him from the vestiges of frost as he lands and bounces slightly from the impact, trapping the plate beneath him, breathless with the whiplash of the moment, with the absurdity of existence.

Douchebag keeps kicking his feet off the edge, in a gentle approximation of a metronome, and smiles.


End file.
